A Different Challenge
by Lorendiac
Summary: The other Teen Titans love their fearless leader, but occasionally he gets some really strange ideas about new challenges to be confronted. Now he insists they spend a few days reading . . . fan mail!
1. Chapter 1: The Announcement

**A Different Challenge**

**Chapter One: The Announcement**

Sometimes Robin went for a couple of weeks at a time without making the other Titans do more than run through an hour or two of training exercises each morning. Then the others would basically find they had the rest of the day to themselves unless there was a bank robbery downtown or something. Robin would be working so hard on a new investigation or some other specialized project—something his friends wouldn't be much help with until it was time to go fight some scoundrels—that he would become a virtual hermit for awhile. Occasionally they'd pound on his door to remind him it was time to eat dinner.

Heck, sometimes he'd completely disappear for a few days. Like the time he flew over to the Far East to brush up on his martial arts skills, or his more recent trip to Gotham to touch base with Batman. He'd just returned from that one yesterday, and apparently it had given him a new idea.

His friends already knew this wasn't going to be one of those happy days when they could all kick back and do their own thing. He'd warned them during breakfast that he had an announcement to make after they'd all finished eating, and now he was standing in front of them in the main room, looking very solemn as he cleared his throat and got down to business.

"Okay, folks. On my trip to Gotham, I bumped into Superman in the Batcave and he said something interesting."

(_Superman?_ The other four Titans braced themselves for a _long_ lecture about social responsibility, the ethics of altruism, being role models to the rest of their generation, and/or patriotic duty—although Raven didn't really feel all that close to the USA, and Starfire's primary loyalty was to another planet—but those details weren't likely to stop Robin when he got into full-blown lecture mode!)

"Now, this new challenge is going to be difficult. It's going to be nerve-wracking. It's going to be frustrating. It's going to be full of surprises. It's going to expose us to the strange obsessions and fantasies of some very scary people who don't look at the world the same way _any_ of us do! We'll probably learn things we never wanted to know!"

(Everyone else started perking up. This sounded much _better_ than they'd been expecting! Was there a new gang of sadistic, psychopathic, super-powered serial killers running amok in some other corner of the world? Maybe Superman didn't have time to deal with them, so he was delegating? You always were able to feel so _virtuous_ about it when you thrashed such monsters within an inch of their collective lives . . .)

"Although unlike most of our missions, this one _won't_ require us to leave the tower unless there's an _unexpected_ emergency!"

(Wait—_what_ did he just say?)

"Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we're going to take a few days to read—and respond to—a sizeable quantity of our fan mail!" Robin paused to appreciate the impact of his announcement.

Dead silence. Oh sure, a few eyes might appear to be bugging out, and a couple of jaws might have dropped, but it was all happening _quietly_. His friends were too stunned to articulate any coherent objections just yet. That was what he'd expected, so he moved on with his lecture.

"Superman says it helps him keep in touch with the common people; gives him a better understanding of what _misconceptions_ they are forming about what he can or can't do; that sort of thing. And when he responds to some of their letters, that helps remind them that he's a real person, and not _just_ a colorful costume glimpsed on the six o'clock news!"

By the time Robin stopped for breath again, Raven had selected her approach. She asked delicately, "And suppose, just for the sake of argument, that some of us _hate_ the idea of wading through a ton of the fan mail that usually piles up in those big bins downstairs until we send the contents off to be recycled?"

Robin played his trump card. "Well, the last time I checked I was still supposed to be the leader around here, setting priorities for how we all spend our 'on duty' time. Obviously, if the rest of you quit following my orders, I won't be 'leading' anymore. But anarchy is not a good thing for a superhero team—so if you don't like the way I'm doing it, you'll need to pick a _different_ leader to call the shots for awhile. If anyone here can get a majority of the vote, I'll step aside gracefully and do my best to support the new leader's policies."

He folded his arms and waited to see if anyone would take him up on it by calling for a vote of confidence.

There was a long pause. Four Titans were each considering the pros and cons of announcing a candidacy.

Beast Boy didn't have to consider it for long. Someday he might like to be leader of a group for awhile . . . but the proper time was still in the distant future. He _knew_ he was still too young and reckless and easily distracted and so forth, and the thought of taking on such life-and-death responsibilities for very long put butterflies in his stomach. Besides, he probably needed to read a lot more on all sorts of subjects which Batman had apparently forced Robin to study during his apprenticeship in Gotham. As it now stood, Beast Boy wouldn't even vote for himself if someone else nominated him!

Starfire had always understood that electing a recently arrived alien to be your leader was just begging for trouble. There were still so many things she might need to ask her friends to explain to her before she could make an informed _decision_ about a fiendishly complicated situation, and by the time they had explained all the background it might be too late for her decision to do any good! If the Titans had been based on Tamaran, it would have been an entirely different situation. Give her another three or four years on Earth, even, and she might be willing to take command of a Titans team if necessary—after she'd been that much better assimilated into the local culture—but not today or tomorrow, thank you very much!

Raven did not see herself as the leader type, did not think any of the others saw her as the leader type, and would be horrified if some poor fool actually voted to saddle her with the responsibility of making all the right tactical decisions in the heat of the moment. She had always respected Robin _enormously_ for the fine job he usually did (despite a few fumbles) of keeping the rest of the Titans, with their very different personalities and hang-ups, working hard at training together to fight as a team, so that they could actually _function_ as something much better than the sum of its parts whenever a real emergency came along. Before meeting the others, she had never believed she'd be a "team player," but Robin had done a surprisingly good job of helping her become one anyway! (Of course Raven had never actually bothered to _tell him_ in so many words that she truly admired the way he handled such a stressful job, et cetera—no need to give the boy a swelled head!)

Cyborg toyed with the idea of throwing his hat in the ring. Starfire would vote for Robin to keep his job; that was a given. But _if_ Cyborg could round up the votes of the other two Titans, that would still give him a sixty percent majority. However, he had serious doubts about his ability to garner those votes. If Cyborg ran on a platform of "let's not worry about answering fan mail," he thought the odds were _favorable_ that Raven would immediately get on the bandwagon and endorse his candidacy. But she might surprise him and prefer to stick with Robin _despite_ the fan mail thing. The grass stain, on the other hand, was probably thinking—or soon would be—about becoming pen pals with lots of cute fangirls who (presumably) worshipped the ground he walked on. So he wasn't likely to want to rock the boat over the fan mail issue.

(Cyborg didn't really understand what fangirls might think they saw in a green-faced little squirt with a protruding fang, but hey, he wasn't exactly "normal-looking" himself . . . and yet he'd been stunned when he'd begun realizing that some girls seemed to like him just fine in spite of that. There was no accounting for taste!)

Moving on . . . even _if_ Cyborg could persuade both Raven and BB to vote for him, he'd then be stuck with the job for . . . how long? Probably at least one year before he could persuade everyone it was a good time to let him "end his term" and elect some other poor fool to ride herd on these rugged individualists? If he tried to call for a fresh election any sooner, some of the others would think he was chickening out. (They'd probably have a point.) Was it really worth a year's worth of heartburn just to wriggle out of answering a few fan letters from the sort of lonely weirdos who had nothing better to do with their lives than write gushy letters to "celebrities" who had never even heard of the writers before?

Besides, he told himself, _Superman_ thought it was a good idea. Robin wouldn't lie about a thing like that—he had too much pride to pretend that his own ideas were actually Superman's suggestions. Which meant that any old time now, Supes might drop in at the Tower when he happened to be in the neighborhood and then might ask, casually, if they had enjoyed answering some of their fan mail, and then Cyborg would have to look the Man of Steel in the eye and explain that gosh darn it, he'd just never gotten around to it . . . and then Superman would gaze at him reproachfully . . .

Any way Cyborg looked at it, he was _stuck_, wasn't he? He wondered if the others had thought this through far enough to realize, as Cyborg _just_ had, that replacing Robin as leader _wouldn't_ do a thing to help them duck their fan mail entirely, now that the most respected superhero on Earth was taking an interest in how they handled the silly stuff!

(In fact, the other three _hadn't_ thought of that angle yet. But it didn't really matter, since none of them felt any frantic need to seek the post of leader today.)

In the end, Cyborg, Raven, Starfire, and Beast Boy were all left waiting to see if _someone else_ would bite the bullet and announce he or she was running against Robin. As minutes ticked by with no volunteers, it gradually became clear that no one in the room was crazy enough to _want_ the job right now!

(Except Robin himself, which was one of the reasons everyone else had been willing to let him have it from Day One of the team's history—along with their general recognition that years of training under Batman's wing probably made him the best-qualified to manage superheroic operations in a "professional" way. Still, it was quite possible that he wouldn't have cried himself to sleep at this point if he'd been voted out; maybe he'd enjoy letting someone else take the _blame_ whenever a group effort failed to achieve the stated objective on the first try?)

Do him justice: Robin didn't try to rush things. He let everyone else have plenty of time to mull it over before he finally asked reasonably, "So . . . am I still the team leader for awhile longer?"

Four heads nodded.

"In that case, we're going to make 'answering fan mail' our _primary form_ of community service for the rest of the week, unless there's a supervillain rampage or an earthquake or something."

(Cyborg and Raven each started mentally reviewing the list of known villains currently "at large," wondering if they'd get lucky and have, say, five or six of those bozos launch new crime sprees in quick succession. Beginning about five minutes from now and keeping it up through the remainder of the week?)

Robin raised a folder from the table nearby and pulled out a slim stack of handouts. "I took the time to prepare a list of general guidelines on what sort of things it's okay to talk about, what subjects we should avoid, what sort of 'fan mail' we can throw away with a clear conscience, et cetera." He passed the sheets out to his friends. "Read them carefully, then I'll answer any questions!"

* * *

**Author's Note:** I like to write something humorous/silly/satirical/etc. to post on April Fools Day. Unfortunately, in this case the silly thing got too long and I realized posting it all in one huge chunk as a single-chapter story would be a very bad idea. So I chopped it off at this point, but I intend to offer the rest of it soon. And by "soon," I mean "within the next week or two, in other installments." I've already written quite a bit of it, and I know how I want it to end, so it shouldn't take as long to complete as my other Titans serial, "The Faith of the Five." (One problem with the latter is that my last chapter took me to the end of the ideas I had ever planned out _in real detail_ in my outlining, although I still know where it's all going in _general _terms, and how certain mysteries will be resolved, and so forth.)


	2. Chapter 2: The Size of the Job

**Author's Note:** At the end of the first chapter, Robin was handing out "guidelines" for dealing with fan mail. In the gap between that chapter and this one, the other Titans have all read their copies. However, I don't plan on sharing them with you just yet. My current plan for "organizing" my ideas about this is to have each of the next few chapters (after this one) concentrate on how the five Titans each deal with fan mail of a particular "type" mentioned in those guidelines; one type per chapter! Or something like that. Stay tuned!

* * *

**Chapter Two: The Size of the Job**

A few minutes later, all five Titans were down on the ground floor of the Tower, staring at six huge plastic "bins," each of which contained a vast quantity of unopened envelopes (leavened with colorful advertising material and the occasional postcard). From left to right, the bins were labeled in alphabetical order: _Beast Boy_, _Cyborg_, _Raven_, _Robin_, _Starfire_, and _Teen Titans_. Starfire's was nearly full; Robin's was running a close second; each of the other four was just about the same—roughly two-thirds full.

The Tower's occupants walked past these bins each time they used the main door to go in or out of the building, but they had spent the last two years learning to _ignore_ the silly things.

Soon after the completion of the Tower, the Titans had been faced with the problem of how to handle a growing torrent of unwanted mail arriving at the front door each day. Mostly mass-produced junk mail at first—but with a trend of more fan mail in the mix each week, after their new home became famous in the national media as "the ultra-modern residence of Jump City's superhero protectors!"

Robin had set up a system with the post office, carefully modeled on arrangements which he learned some of the older generation of superheroes had already worked out with other branch offices of the United States Postal Service. The USPS agreed to sort through anything addressed to any occupant of Titans Tower when it arrived at their main facility in Jump City. The sorting process involved six piles: One stack for each of the five Titans and a last one for anything addressed to the entire team.

(If a piece of mail was addressed to more than one Titan, but not the entire team—"Attention: Robin & Starfire, c/o Titans Tower," for instance—then it was automatically added to the stack for whichever addressee was listed _first_.)

According to the new routine, just once a week a postman delivered bulging bags containing the last seven days' worth of mail, already sorted and labeled. The postman would leave the bags just outside the door and then leave. Eventually someone (usually Cyborg) would open the front door, examine the labels on the bags, and empty each one into the matching bin inside the Tower, just on the off chance that someone _might_ actually want to investigate some of the latest crop of letters and postcards from people frantically trying to get his or her attention.

(As far as Cyborg knew, _none_ of the Titans had ever bothered to skim through their own mail bin since the system began. But they always had the option!)

Eventually at least one or two of the bins would be overflowing, and Cyborg would place a call to a service company which took tons of old paper away to shred and recycle. All five bins would be emptied out at once. It had been just over a month since the last emptying. At least the Titans were doing their bit to keep several tons of paper each year going back into general use, thereby saving the lives of a few innocent trees somewhere!

This was not to say that it was impossible to successfully communicate with the Tower's residents from a long distance away. Actual _friends_ and/or _allies_ of the team—such as Batman, the Doom Patrol, Titans East, and the Jump City police (along with various other law enforcement organizations)—knew how to send messages by other means so that they would actually be _noticed_ by the intended recipients. For instance: Encrypted calls if the matter was urgent enough to merit interrupting _whatever_ a Titan might be doing just then. If it wasn't, then things could be emailed back and forth between addresses which were kept secret from the public. Cyborg was in charge of keeping the software up-to-date on that sort of thing; any incoming emails which did _not_ use the Titans' latest encryption codes were _automatically_ blocked as spam!

(Ergo, any fan who wanted to send unsolicited emails to the Titans was completely out of luck _even if_ he learned one of their current addresses; no one would ever notice the message had existed, much less be tempted to open it! With snail mail, at least he had a _tiny chance_ that someone would eventually read his epistle!)

"Okay, here's what I didn't write down," Robin said while his buddies were still staring at the bins with expressions which suggested a certain lack of enthusiasm. "I want each of you to select 500 envelopes, open them, examine the contents, and respond to at least some as you go along. Sure, 500 apiece is just a drop in the bucket of what's piled up in each bin—but it's a start!"

"Excuse me, Robin," Starfire said dubiously. "But a few weeks after we moved into this Tower, did you not say that fan mail was a waste of time? That once someone has gained a reputation as a 'superhero,' he will receive far more mail than he could possibly answer in detail even if he worked at it every day? And did you not also say that much of it will be requests for special favors the hero should not grant; perhaps even for things which are _impossible_ for him to accomplish?"

"Sure," Robin conceded. "I said that! But I was what, fifteen? I didn't have all the answers at that age! All I knew was that Batman _never_ reads fan letters from law-abiding civilians. Since the Batcave doesn't exactly have its own mailbox out front, most of the items addressed to 'Batman' end up at the Gotham police HQ. Their mail room filters it along with the thousands of other items they get each day. All Batman wants them to save for him is the really weird stuff that _might be_ from the Riddler or Two-Face or someone else who likes to play mind games in advance of his next big crime."

"That sounds _sensible_," Cyborg said pointedly. "But as soon as Superman mentioned a different approach, you decided to follow _his_ example? You do remember that _he_ can read things _super-fast _whenever he has a spare minute? None of us can!"

"That's why we're _not_ going to do this every week," Robin said patiently. "We'll try it for a few days, and see how it goes. Maybe we'll do fan mail binges once or twice a year in the future, but that decision can wait."

Beast Boy heaved a sigh of relief. "So after the next couple of days, _most_ of this stuff will still be taken away for recycling, same as before? You aren't planning to make us do, like, a steady quota?"

Robin looked innocent. "Wouldn't dream of it! Most of what I said a couple of years ago still looks pretty good. I know we can't answer _all_ of it, and I'm not proposing to try! But it won't hurt us much to find out more about what a fair number of ordinary people really think of us!"

"Not _much_?" Starfire inquired, startled by the implication that there would be _some_ pain involved.

"Some people send 'hate mail' to celebrities, with or without provocation," Robin explained. "We call these our 'fan mail bins,' but I bet a significant percentage of the contents didn't come from fervent _admirers_. Our feelings may get bruised, but I'm sure we're all tough enough to handle it!"

(Raven certainly wasn't worried about that point. After you've spit in Trigon's eye, a few nasty words in a letter from a complete stranger aren't going to break your spirit.)

Beast Boy scratched his head. "So wait—if someone says all sorts of scathing things about me in a letter, what am I supposed to do about it if I think most of their gripes are wildly exaggerated or just plain wrong?"

Robin spread his hands. "I didn't write any special guidelines about that. If you think someone is unfairly criticizing you, then you can write a reply trying to set the record straight . . . if you happen to feel like it. If you think it's a lost cause, don't bother!"

"Hold on," Raven said, her attention captured by that "don't bother" comment. "Your guidelines do list some things you figure we're better off throwing away—but just _how much_ of the other, relatively harmless stuff do you actually _expect_ us to reply to? I gather we're allowed to ignore _some_ of it on the grounds of personal taste?"

Robin paused. "I hadn't come up with a hard number—heck, let's say we're supposed to compose and mail a dozen replies apiece, minimum, by no later than Saturday night. That shouldn't be too stressful."

Raven had always had a gift for imagining worst-case scenarios. "What if I look through my quota of 500 items and don't find a dozen pieces that are _worth_ replying to?"

Robin shrugged. "Then you'll just have to go back and open a few hundred more until you do find enough material to inspire twelve replies. Or until your bin is _empty_, as long as you actually _looked_ at everything in it hard enough to give the writers a fair chance to get you interested in whatever they had to say."

Cyborg was reexamining the list of guidelines with a jaundiced eye. "I suppose you'll want to look at our replies before we mail them, to double-check that we're not accidentally spilling anything that would look awful in the media?"

Robin stared at him. "Why would I do that? Either I believe you guys have some sense of discretion—and will actually pay attention to my basic guidelines after I write them down for you—or else I don't. And if I don't, then this team is in terrible trouble. We've all known each other for two years. We've all been living under the same _roof_ for two years. We've all been taking turns saving one another's _lives_ for two years! Anyone can make an _honest_ mistake occasionally—and we all have!—but at the end of the day we still _trust_ each other's good intentions. For instance, I think you guys trust me not to be constantly violating your privacy by _spying_ on everything the rest of you say and do, any time, any place, that _might_ _conceivably_ be embarrassing to the team. So if you ever caught me _censoring_ your personal correspondence, then you'd be justified in throwing me out on my ear!"

He paused, struck by a new thought. "Well . . . unless for some reason we had agreed _in advance _that we could tolerate mutual censorship in extreme circumstances—such as when there was something so dangerous going on that having our communications with the outside world say _exactly_ the 'right things' about certain subjects looked like a matter of life and death. In that case, double-checking the wisdom of each other's letters and conversations with outsiders might feel more _urgent_ than rigorously respecting 'personal privacy' for the next day or two."

Robin waved that last bit aside as he finished up his lecture. "But that was just speculative. In practice, we've never agreed to such rules, and that scenario would have nothing to do with this mission anyway! Any other questions? If not, let's start counting out our 500 apiece! And remember, _obvious_ junk mail doesn't count at all—it won't tell us anything about our own public images!"

(Until a minute ago, Beast Boy had been chewing on the idea of sending out one friendly form letter to any writer who _sounded like_ a cute teenage girl with a proper appreciation of his cool green suavity, and just ignoring _everything else_. Now he was forced to modify that plan. After Robin's big speech about mutual trust, it just wouldn't feel right to type out one generic letter, print it out at least twelve times for different girls, and claim that this constituted meeting the quota of twelve. Beast Boy might still use the form letter idea for some fans, but he now realized he'd have to type out at least eleven other, more personalized replies, in order to feel he'd lived up to Robin's expectations without cheating. What a dirty trick for their leader to pull, putting it all on their own consciences!)

* * *

**Author's Note:** Just in case you were wondering: My comments about how our heroes have handled mail delivery "normally" (until Robin got this wild idea about answering some of it) are drawn entirely from my own imagination. Offhand, I don't recall any TV episode that really addressed the point of how likely Starfire would be to actually _see_ a letter from a random admirer who was frantically begging her to send him an autographed photo, for instance. So I had to improvise something on the spur of the moment, for the purposes of my own plot.

Although I admit the Titans obviously sometimes paid attention to an "unexpected delivery"—such as those puppet replicas of themselves which The Puppet King used in his first appearance. But he may have simply hand-delivered the box and left it sitting outside the front door waiting for someone to find it. There was no clear sign that the box had definitely arrived through normal channels—the Titans apparently didn't find that package inside a bag containing a hundred _other_ items of daily mail. Perhaps that episode (in Season One) happened _very_ early on, before the USPS had actually added the newly built Titans Tower to somebody's regular mail route, and thus before (in my reconstruction of events) Robin ever found it necessary to make special arrangements for dealing with a flood of unwanted mail?


	3. Chapter 3: Early Screening

**Author's Note:** Okay, when material is quoted from Robin's guidelines or from a fan letter, it will be rendered in italics as the default condition. That will help you distinguish between what is written on pieces of paper in the hands of the Titans, and what is going through their own minds as they react to whatever they've been reading.

* * *

**Chapter Three: Early Screening**

_1. If the writer is blatantly trying to establish a romance out of the blue—such as asking you on a date, or talking about how much he or she would love to kiss you, or proposing marriage, or anything similar, moral or otherwise—then feel free to toss the letter aside and move on to the next. _(Quoted from Robin's guidelines.)

* * *

The Titans had each counted out their five hundred letters and then carried the correspondence back to their private rooms. The agreement was that around one o'clock they'd all take a break for lunch and compare notes.

Starfire scrupulously followed Robin's guidelines and threw away any letter which quickly made it _obvious_ that the author was desperately seeking romance. That simple step reduced her pile of 500 to about one-third of its original size.

It occurred to her that Robin probably had a similar problem—wouldn't it be nice if they could find some way to introduce all the female fans who thought they loved Robin to all the male fans who thought they loved Starfire? At least those young people would have common interests to talk about, and perhaps some pairs would get interested in one another and stop pestering the _Titans_ with their pleas for affection. (Most importantly, perhaps less of those shameless Earth girls would be trying to capture _Robin's_ attention!)

She made a mental note to suggest it at lunch and see if anyone else was interested in her half-formed idea, then shrugged and went back to the short pile to start finding things she actually wanted to respond to, subject to Robin's other guidelines, of course.

* * *

As luck would have it, the second letter Robin opened began:

_Dear Robbie Poo:_

_I hope you remember that blissful evening as well as I do! Howzabout an encore?_

Oh, no!

Robin skipped down to the signature at the bottom and confirmed his worst fears. It read:

_Your Own Cuddly Kitten!_

Killer Moth's daughter must have broken up with her boyfriend Fang _again_. Robin had never quite understood what she saw in that guy in the first place—but then, he'd never quite understood what Fang saw in Kitten, either. Still, when Robin had watched those two hugging at the end of the worst date of his life (not that he'd had all that many), he'd taken considerable comfort from the realization that Kitten had completely forgotten about _him_ for the time being!

(Should've known it was too good to last!)

Robin hastily skimmed through the rest of the letter to see if Kitten was actually threatening to kill anyone this time—found she wasn't—and decided all he could do was carefully not answer, and pray that she'd decide he just wasn't worthy of her after all.

Galvanized by this experience, Robin starting slicing more envelopes open, then using some speedreading tricks (which Batman had taught him years ago) to _rapidly_ filter out anything else which appeared to be asking him out on a date, or suggesting other types of "romantic" activity, or even just strongly hinting that if _he_ wanted to ask the girl, he wouldn't need to worry about being shot down in flames. All that went into a trash bag—Robin didn't need to waste any more time on those sociopathic types who regarded a costumed superhero as a fashionable toy to make the other girls in their cliques turn green with envy.

Okay, so he was probably being unfair to _some_ of these correspondents. A few years of helping Batman face all the usual suspects in Gotham tended to leave a guy with a cynical view of human nature. Some of these letters might come from reasonably "nice and normal" girls who would _never dream _of threatening an entire city just to extort you into "asking" them to to the junior prom. Perhaps some of these writers were just desperately lonely. Or, in some cases, probably weren't even _desperate_, but were just _letting off steam_ by writing fanciful letters to a teenage celebrity whom they knew perfectly well would never take their missives too seriously?

At any rate, Robin really couldn't afford to care about the exact motives of any given writer in the "romance-seeker" category. He had set the guideline about that sort of thing, and he was definitely going to set the example by following his own guidelines . . . even if it wouldn't surprise him to see some of his friends fudge on certain details. But he had also meant it when he said he wasn't planning to peer over their shoulders and study every word of their private correspondence.

* * *

Raven looked at the stack near her right elbow and blinked. She'd been tossing any "romantic" letters in that direction as she made a preliminary sweep through the entire pile. She'd previously estimated that Robin's "No Romance" guideline might help her winnow _two or three_ letters out of a sample group of 500 items from her mail bin.

(She expected each of the other Titans to get considerably _more_ in the way of romantic overtures, but that was _their_ problem.)

Instead, her "romantic discard" pile now had . . . she did a quick riffle through them . . . forty-seven letters. (Well, technically it was forty-four _letters_ and three _postcards_, but that wasn't the point.)

Forty-seven divided by five hundred was, um, 9.4 percent.

She hadn't seen any Gallup polls on the subject, but there were probably many tens of thousands of people out there who would proudly call themselves "Teen Titans fans." Presumably some thousands of those would even call themselves "Raven fans" (although she wasn't sure why they'd bother).

And now it appeared that as many as 9.4 percent of the "Raven fans" were masochistic enough to _want_ to go on a date with _her_? Now _there_ was a depressing discovery!

(It was almost enough to make a girl weep for her entire generation! Fortunately, Raven didn't cry _that_ easily.)

Then she shivered as she realized the situation might be even _worse_ than it appeared at first glance. The 9.4 percent of her fan mail which was angling for a date only represented those of her male fans who apparently were obtuse enough to think they had a _chance_ of persuading Raven to reply and schedule a "blind date" with some weirdo she had never even heard of before. (Yeah, like _that_ was going to happen.) Accordingly, whether from arrogance or cluelessness or sheer desperation, they had made their bids by letter. But surely _not all_ of her male fans were _that_ self-centered in how they normally tried to attract the attention of a girl after they began to feel a certain interest in her.

(Well . . . she _hoped_ they weren't always that bad, anyway. But it would be just her luck to attract all the _worst_ elements of Teen Titans fandom. In fact, it would be only natural if all the lonely _nice_ guys had recognized a kindred spirit in Starfire and were writing to _her_ instead. Still, Raven would work with the optimistic assumption of "_most_ of my fans have at least a _smidgen_ of tact and humility" for the moment and see where the logic took her.)

How many more male "Raven fans" were out there who _also wanted_ to ask her on a date, but were too _realistic_ to think it would do the slightest good when she didn't know any of them from Adam? So they were bright enough not to make any blatant overtures in their _first_ letters, at least; even if they were secretly toying with the idea of working up to it at some later time, if and when they had become cozy pen pals of hers?

Ah, well. Not much she could do about all this right now, beyond following Robin's wise advice by not sending any reply which could possibly "encourage" any stranger dumb enough to ask her for a date by mail. If any full-fledged stalkers later showed up outside the Tower and started annoying her—by trying to peep in through the windows, for instance—she'd be firm. She'd give them _exactly_ what she had given Doctor Light the first time she met him. It wouldn't draw blood, but it certainly ought to discourage them!

* * *

The sender's name was Athena Norrell. The letter began:

_Dear Cyborg: _

_You don't know me, but I'm a great admirer. I'm also majoring in electrical engineering. If you ever need any help with maintenance and repairs on stuff you can't easily reach by yourself, I'd love the chance to help out and see what makes you tick. _

_I could double-check your system diagnostics, clean off your solenoids, recalibrate your sensors, check your hyraulics for leaks, and even give you a full oil change if need be! _

_While I was checking your wiring for any loose connections, and so forth, I could also keep an eye out for any areas where you might want to upgrade key components. After all, the tech that was cutting-edge when you became a cyborg may be second-rate by today's standards—things move so fast in this field!_

She went on and on like that. Cyborg wondered if he was blushing. He didn't hear—or read—such racy suggestions every day. Sure, later on in her letter this young lady claimed she was only interested in getting extra credit with her professors if she became intimately familiar with some of his unique hardware configurations, but he saw right through _that_ cover story.

* * *

_Dear Beast Boy:_

_I think you're the cutest Titan! Do you have a steady girlfriend? _

_Yours Truly,  
__Shawna McCormick (currently unattached)_

Well, that was short and to the point . . . showed she had extremely good taste, too!

Beast Boy sat back to consider his options. Robin's guidelines indicated he should ignore this, but he didn't want to. Besides, "guidelines" weren't the same things as "Sacred Commandments," were they? It wasn't really a sin to bend them a little, was it?

(Beast Boy honestly thought he was being _very clever_ in working out that rationalization. It did not occur to him that perhaps Robin had carefully chosen the word "guidelines" for his handout for _exactly_ that reason; fully anticipating that any generalizations he offered about handling fan mail would not strike each of the other four as deserving slavish obedience in every possible situation; hence it was better to use a mild word which did not appear to be loudly demanding such absolute respect in the first place. Occasionally ignoring a mere "guideline" was trivial, but getting into the habit of ignoring "explicit orders from the team leader" could be _fatal _someday. Hence, Robin tried to be very careful about how many "explicit orders" he actually gave in peacetime, so as not to devalue the important ones!)

Beast Boy figured this was the sort of thing that was bound to come up again and again today. Earlier, he'd been thinking about cranking out a form letter for such things. But what to say in it? He certainly couldn't invite every girl who sounded interested in him to fill out an application and thereby get started on the road to possibly becoming his new girlfriend.

(He _knew_ he couldn't do it that way . . . but now that this train of thought had been _triggered_, Beast Boy wasted the next nine minutes fantasizing about what the application-and-testing process might be like, _if_ he actually had the nerve to take that approach, and _if _a substantial number of fangirls then turned out to be willing to participate in a lengthy _competition_ for the honor of dating him for awhile. The kissing portion of the contest would generate the _most_ important factor in each finalist's score, he decided; but should the essay test be weighted more heavily than the cooking test, or the other way around? Eventually, however, he came to his senses and tried to think of something more realistic.)

He supposed the most important thing was to make it clear that he didn't have a real girlfriend _right now_. No need to talk about Terra. The next most important thing was to not make it sound like he was in any hurry to find one. But he didn't want to seem too standoffish either . . . how did _other _celebrities handle this kind of problem, anyway? Hadn't Elasti-Girl once told him a story about some celebrity who eventually married a girl who had sent some fan mail? (He couldn't remember the name now.)

Not that Beast Boy was in any hurry to take things that far! He liked associating with pretty girls, and sooner or later he thought he'd really get the knack of flirting with them, but he was definitely too young for any _serious_ romance. The _last_ thing he wanted at this point in his young life was to get in over his head and then be dragged in front of a preacher and prodded to say "I do" and then feel obligated to settle down in a nice quiet house in the suburbs to start raising children and mowing the lawn every Saturday and actually _sharing_ closet space with someone who would think being married to him gave her the right to criticize his taste in clothes and his favorite amusements and his other habits . . . no, such a miserably oppressed lifestyle just wasn't for him. Not now. He knew many grown-ups seemed to like it—or at least tolerate it—so maybe he'd find it more appealing in another ten or fifteen years (which, at his current age, seemed almost as far away as the heat death of the universe).

Maybe someone had already posted copies of something useful on the Internet. Not too friendly, not too formal, but encouraging the fan to write again, and it might even have all the words spelled correctly? Beast Boy brought up Google on his bedroom computer and started searching.

(Once Beast Boy's mind started wandering, it was hard to make it stop. As it turned out, he would spend the next hour on the Internet, mostly reading samples of other people's fan mail and replies thereto, before he remembered he really ought to be doing something about _his own_ fan mail!)


	4. Chapter 4: Money, Money, Money

**Author's Note:** For the sake of being semi-organized, I'm planning to group together fan mails of a certain type in each chapter. In this case, we concentrate on letters talking about money. I will write this as if all five Titans are reading such things simultaneously. Sure, you know and I know that it's highly improbable that all five Titans are going to read money-oriented letters at the same time, followed by all carefully reading another type of letter simultaneously, et cetera, after screening out the most obviously romantic ones (as seen in the previous chapter), but for my purposes I'm making some highly unrealistic assumptions in order to give each chapter a consistent theme. My _rough draft_ of this story just jumped around from Robin reacting to one type of letter, and then a minute later Raven reacting to an entirely different type of letter, et cetera, without any sort of _pattern_ to it. But as I started fleshing the idea out further, I decided it would be more satisfying to have each chapter show five different young superheroes each dealing, in different ways, with the same "general type" of fan mail at the "same time."

(I know, I know—I'm writing about a group whose five core members are a cyborg, a half-demon sorceress, a green guy who changes into animals of any size without even worrying about where the extra mass comes from or disappears to, an alien princess who learns languages by kissing people, and Batman's protégé—how on earth do I think I can get away with making _unrealistic assumptions_ about such a normal group of people?)

* * *

**Chapter Four: Money, Money, Money**

_2. Remember: We are not a bank. It's not our job to give or "lend" money. We aren't seeking great "investment opportunities," either. None of us are expert analysts of the financial markets, and even the professionals often get it wrong. And whatever you may end up doing with your own cash, _don't_ make any promises involving funds in the team treasury. That money is not yours to give. _

_P.S. If the person is telling a _really_ heart-rending sob story, salve your conscience by putting the letter in a bag to be sent to the Wayne Foundation in Gotham. They have staffers who know a hundred times more than we do about sorting out the real hardship cases from those who are just lazy. _

(Quoted from Robin's guidelines.)

* * *

_Dear Raven: _

_Everyone knows of your interest in the occult. As it just so happens, I recently inherited the private library of my great-uncle. He never managed to cast a successful spell in his life, but he kept trying, and trying, and trying—and kept buying any books that might help him get it right. _

_I have no interest in spending my life that way, so I find myself with an extensive library of arcane books and other documents which I would rather exchange for good old-fashioned money. I don't feel right about offering the rarest items up for auction to just anyone, but I thought you might be interested in picking up a five-hundred-year-old morocco-bound edition of The _Necronomicon_, and perhaps another volume reputed to be copied from the notes of the legendary Math ap Mathonwy, although my uncle suspected it only dated back to _tenth_-century Wales._

Raven looked through the rest of the letter, searching for the part that would mention arranging for her to examine the merchandise with her own eyes, even test a couple of spells from each book she might consider buying, before she _paid_ for any of them.

That part wasn't there. The seller obviously expected her to send the money to him on sheer faith, and then just sit around the Tower twiddling her thumbs while waiting for her purchases to arrive.

She shook her head. Another hoaxer. Furthermore, he obviously didn't know two important things:

The _Necronomicon_ had only been invented by H.P. Lovecraft as a useful buzzword to drop into his horror stories in the early twentieth century.

Raven _already owned_ a copy of the complete manuscript of _Al Azif_ (the original title used by the book's composer, Abdul Alhazred, in the early eighth century), and she also owned a copy of the Latin translation made by Olaus Wormius several centuries later.

(A smaller mind, one accustomed to thinking of the cosmos around it in terms of a single ongoing reality, where time always moved in the same direction and cause-and-effect worked in a simple linear sequence, might consider items A and B to be mutually exclusive. But these little "paradoxes" were easily resolved if you just knew how to look at them from the proper perspective. A _five-dimensional_ perspective was about right. Being Trigon's spawn also helped. Otherwise, perusing the entire volume—in _any_ language—might have driven her insane. But a book which could imperil the mind of a regular human was no more than mildly annoying to a psyche which was half-demonic to begin with!)

With that settled, Raven moved on to reject several letters from people who wanted her to help them pay their mortgages. Why they thought she would really care about their private financial dealings—much less have enough cash handy to help them out each month, even if she _did_ care enough to try—was incredibly unclear.

(Actually, one enterprising fellow wasn't asking for money; instead, he wanted her to give _nightmares_ to the people at his local mortage company. Something about his not having understood what an "adjustable rate mortgage" really was; therefore, these people should be punished until they quit hounding him each month over the "outrageous" payments they now expected him to make according to the documents which they had "tricked" him into signing. He obviously didn't understand that even if the people who had arranged his mortgage all had such terrible nightmares that they quit their jobs, this wouldn't end his legal _obligation_ to keep paying the same monthly installments to _someone_. Even Raven knew that if a mortgage company went out of business, then its outstanding loans and other assets would just be acquired by some other financial institution, and nothing would really change.)

* * *

_Dear Robin:_

_On the night of the fifteenth of October, at or about 10:30 PM, your friend Cyborg picked up my Nissan Sentra and hurled it across the street at Cinderblock. The villain was subdued, but my Nissan was wrecked. The problem is that when I lost my job I let my car insurance lapse, so the company won't pay to replace my car. But it seems to me that you Titans are still liable. Buying a used car, of the same make, model, and year as the old one, would cost me about $3000._

_Yours,  
Nick Alden_

Robin sighed. Mr. Alden had his facts in error. The Teen Titans had worked all that out with the city, county, and state governments before they had moved into the Tower. The team would _not_ be held liable in court for collateral property damage which happened "in the line of duty" when they were making their sincere best efforts to prevent even worse things from happening. But if it happened within the city limits of Jump City, then the damage would be covered by civic insurance policies, much the same as if the car had been damaged by gunshots fired by city cops tangling with more conventional criminals. Same principle applied if it happened elsewhere within the county, or outside the county but within the state.

Mr. Alden's insurance company wasn't interested in helping him collect since he wasn't a paid-up policy holder at the time his car was damaged, but that didn't mean no _other_ insurance company owed him any money. Apparently his old company hadn't bothered to explain that to him. Robin drafted a reply to be mailed later.

Then he went back to his stack of mail. Someone was generously offering to sell him half of an old treasure map which showed where the notorious pirate "Dark Conrad" Constantine had supposedly stockpiled his loot, two centuries ago. (Apparently the fact that the other half of the map was missing was the reason the owner hadn't dug up the treasure himself by now.)

Yeah, right. Surely none of Robin's friends would fall for such an old scam as that?

* * *

Cyborg had a letter asking for his "help" in sneaking millions of dollars out of Nigeria. The idea was that a childless multimillionaire with the surname "Stone" had recently died intestate in Lagos . . . and if "Victor Stone" showed up and _claimed to be_ the next of kin, then a probate court would turn the money over to him. The guy writing the letter claimed to be a Nigerian attorney who would handle all the details of the legal paperwork in exchange for a generous commission. (Why the _real_ next of kin couldn't be found, even if he or she might turn out to be an obscure third cousin of the deceased, was a point which the author of the letter _completely failed_ to address.)

The whole thing made no sense. It was likely that Cyborg had some distant relatives in that part of Africa—if so, _very_ distant—but they wouldn't have called themselves "Stone" anyway; his patrilineal ancestors had only taken on that surname during the nineteenth century, well after the family's arrival in the Western Hemisphere, and he'd never heard of any members of the family migrating right back to Africa within the last century or two. And if the so-called "lawyer" just wanted a front man for a fraudulent claim, why couldn't he find someone he already knew well right there at home, instead of beating the bushes by sending letters halfway around the world to complete strangers who just happened to be named "Stone"?

* * *

_Dear Sir: _

_The wise know how to make money work for them. The common herd only see it constantly flowing out of their hands without ever grasping how to reverse the process with a little ingenuity. We feel certain that you will recognize a new opportunity for legitimate self-enrichment when it is brought to your attention, however!_

_All you have to do is send one dollar to the person whose name is four spots above yours on this list. Then add your own name at the bottom of the list and mail copies of this message to ten other people. If each of those ten send back their dollar to the person whose name is three spots above yours, and then they add their names at the bottom and forward copies of this to ten other likely participants apiece, and so forth, then by the time the money starts flowing into _your_ mailbox from the people four steps further down in the chain, you'll be looking at a potential ten thousand dollars in very short order! Of course, some people will likely decline to participate, but your profits should still be considerable! And no one gets hurt, because any given participant only spends one dollar! (Plus the trivial costs of running off ten copies of the list with his name attached, and finding envelopes and postage for them.)_

The letter closed with four names (Sanders Fortescue, Abraham Embezi, Lisa Trepoff, Jacob Morgenstern), each accompanied by a Post Office box number.

Beast Boy read that again, carefully.

Did this Mister Fortescue really think he could pull the wool over the eyes of a Teen Titan? Did he think Beast Boy was no brighter than the typical sucker? Did he really expect Beast Boy to send copies of this list of names (with his own attached) to ten other people?

It was obvious what a clever man whould do in this situation! He'd add his name to the bottom of the list and then send copies to at least a _hundred_ other people! Even if each of them only forwarded new copies to ten people apiece, et cetera, as specified in the original letter, then the enterprising guy who had sent out ten times as many copies as he was "supposed to" would be looking at a possible profit in the neighborhood of a cool hundred thousand dollars!

Hmmm. Making his "quota" for replies to his adoring fans might turn out to be a heck of a lot easier than Beast Boy had anticipated!

(It did not occur to Beast Boy that the four names listed on the letter in his hand might all be aliases for the same man, who had never sent a dollar of his own to anyone else, and had no intention of so doing.)

* * *

The letter in Starfire's hand seemed to say (in rather convoluted prose) that she was already a "winner" of something called The UK National Lottery.

That was a trifle peculiar. Starfire had never even been to Britain since arriving on this world, and she was certain she had never purchased any British lottery tickets. How did one go about winning a lottery without obtaining a ticket first? They didn't have lotteries on Tamaran, but Raven had explained the concept to Starfire once, saying she regarded money spent on such things as "a stupid tax." Then she had clarified that—Raven didn't mean the tax itself was lacking in wisdom; she actually thought the concept was _diabolically clever_ from the governmental point of view. But her basic position was that actually _spending_ hard-earned money on government-sponsored lotteries amounted to "voluntarily paying a _tax_ in direct proportion to how _stupid_ you are."

Starfire thought that over and then incinerated the letter with a flash from her eyes. Probably best not to get involved with these "lotteries" when she still didn't really understand them—besides, she didn't want to make Raven grouchy. (Well, no grouchier than usual.)

She examined another epistle.

Some people at a magazine's headquarters were telling her how beautiful she was—which was nice of them, she supposed—and were also offering her . . . _how much_ to pose for photographs? Couldn't they find enough existing pictures of her in other magazines, or by taking stills from video recordings of old news broadcasts?

Wait—these photographs were supposed to be taken in the _nude?_

Why should that be so important?

* * *

**Author's Note:** No, Starfire _isn't_ going to do it. Trust me on this. But it suddenly occurred to me that she must get such _offers_ occasionally, and for my purposes those offers should logically be classified as "financial communications," same as everything else in this chapter.


	5. Chapter 5: Wannabes!

**Author's Note: **I wrote most of this out a _long_ time ago, as a rough draft, but then set it aside and didn't go back to it for ages. There was a lengthy spell of car trouble and associated money trouble which messed up my daily routines for weeks. By the time my life was feeling more normal, I somehow wasn't in the mood to work hard on my fanfic projects immediately. I started spending more time catching up on my reading, and watching TV shows on DVD, and so forth. I wouldn't call it "writer's block"—more a case of "writer's lassitude."

("Lassitude sounds so much _bette_r than "laziness," don't you think? More poetic. Any fool can be _lazy_, but being_ lassitudinous_ takes special skill! For one thing, you have to know how to spell it!)

Incidentally: This story presumably takes place _before_ Season Five, when the Titans spent a lot of time running around handing out communicators to every teenage hero they could think of.

* * *

****

Chapter Five: Wannabes!

_3. Batman occasionally runs into people who have snazzy costumes and not much else in the way of qualifications—but they want to be superheroes anyway. We'll probably hear from some of those. Granted, some may actually have qualifications; it's very hard to tell from a letter. There's no perfect rule for responding to every possible type of wannabe, but my advice is: If it sounds like they don't have any powers in the first place, then it's probably not smart to encourage them to risk their necks fighting real villains who won't pull their punches._

_(Sure, Batman and I break that rule, but he trained for years and years _before_ he started doing it for real. By the time I came along, he was able to give me crash courses in all the important things he'd learned along the way. And he and I have very strong motivations for doing what we do—we know the risks and we accept them. We don't just think it's a videogame where you can "pause" or "restart" any time you're close to death.)_

(Quoted from Robin's guidelines.)

* * *

_Dear Raven: I just luv that whole Goth thing you have going for you. Who does your hair? How do you get that exact shade on your face and legs so that you practically look like a nosferatu? _

_P.S. Where do I go to study sorcery so I can throw people through the air whenever they aggravate me—just like you do?_

_Carla Cadescu_

Raven sat back and pondered. First, she got the terrible feeling that the young writer didn't realize Raven's pale-gray complexion was its natural self, rather than reflecting a heavy reliance on pancake makeup. Second, nobody "did" her hair, not in the sense Carla probably meant; violet was its _natural_ color, and aside from having a barber chop it off above the collar every once in a while, Raven didn't see any need to spend money on fancy coiffures.

As to the part about gaining the powers to let you be a butt-kicking sorceress . . . Raven considered saying: _Dear Carla, if you want to follow in my footsteps by having _frightening_ amounts of mystic potential just waiting to be trained, then you have to start nine months before you're scheduled to be born, by making sure your mother mistakenly becomes intimate with a demon lord. This _guarantees_ some heavy-duty magic-using capability will be encoded in your genes. Next, make sure your mom gets custody of you and takes you to Azarath for a reasonably healthy upbringing—but since it's already a tad too late for all that in your case, I recommend you junk the whole idea._

No, no, no. She wasn't going to say that. On the other hand, she had no intention of budgeting the time to personally test every wannabe-sorceress for mystic potential. That wasn't her job!

Come to think of it . . . whose job _was_ it to sift out the serious candidates from the wishful thinkers? You never knew where those genes would crop up. She made a note to inquire later. Someone in the Justice League ought to know about these things . . . but if any fool solemnly advised her to forward such letters to the faculty at Hogwarts, she was liable to lose her temper!

* * *

_Dear Beast Boy:_

_How did you learn how to turn into all those neat animals? Is there some magic word you need to say? Like "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious"? Just think of how I could scare my sister by suddenly being a big spider dangling right in front of her face when she's brushing her teeth! Or making the noise of a rattlesnake from under her bed! Or maybe turning into a skunk when people I don't like are hanging around!_

_Then, after I'm big enough, I could be a superhero like you! Mommy says I won't be old enough for at least another ten years, though._

_Yours,  
__Todd Carpenter_

Beast Boy frowned. The spider idea was just gruesome. Absolutely out of the question. No self-respecting shapechanging superhero would ever do that to a girl when she was brushing her teeth. Too easy to get squished, for one thing!

The "hidden rattlesnake" idea was pretty cool, though. And the skunk idea had real possibilities. Somehow, he'd never considered attacking his enemies in _that_ fashion! Maybe that would break Mad Mod's concentration the next time the crazy Limey was trying to hypnotize him?

Regretfully, he typed out a quick answer to tell his admirer that there was no magic spell or other convenient way to make you a loveable green shapechanger.

* * *

_Dear Cyborg: _

_Just how does a guy become such a high-tech superhero? I'd love to follow in your footsteps! _

_Gil Tremaine_

Cyborg scowled. Then he started dictating an absolutely honest description of how he had ended up in the "superhero" line of work. Voice-recognition software took it all down.

"Well, first you get roughly half of your body mass destroyed in an accident. Then you wake up to discover that your brilliant scientist father has replaced that with high-tech substitutes when you weren't looking. Then you sit around feeling sorry for yourself for awhile because on the one hand your social life is suffering miserably now that you look so _freakish_, and on the other hand you'll _never_ be allowed to compete in the Olympics now that you've got all those 'unfair _advantages_.' (That's a laugh!)

"So you mope around for months, getting most of your fresh air after dark and in a hooded sweatshirt so you aren't quite so conspicuous, until by sheer good luck you wander into the middle of an alien invasion which gives you legitimate targets to hit. And if you're very lucky, the invasion just happens to attract some other weirdos as well, and even one of the aliens turns out to be reasonably friendly, and the result is that before you know it, you've been roped into signing up with the newest superhero team on the block and reporters actually start wanting to interview you about things _other than_ 'How does it feel to have so many of your body parts replaced? What do you intend to do with your life now that your dream of Olympic gold medals has been _shattered_?'"

He stared at the words on the screen. Maybe a little bit _too_ sour? He'd set that one aside and look at it again tomorrow or the day after, and decide if he really wanted to send it.

* * *

_Dear Starfire:_

_I heard on the radio that you are a Vegan. Me too! Small world, isn't it? I had no idea any superheroes lived the Vegan lifestyle!_

Starfire frowned as she glanced down to the foot of the letter. She was fairly certain a girl with the name of "Bette Kane" was _not_ from Tamaran or any of the other worlds which orbited Vega. She shrugged that away for the moment; then resumed reading from where she had left off.

_I'm pretty good at the old hand-to-hand combat—black belts in two disciplines!—and a great gymnast and all-round athlete, if I do say so myself._

"Yes, you certainly do," Starfire murmured.

_I've even got a red-and-gold costume designed; very splashy! Goes well with the name I've picked out: Flamebird! But I've been thinking I need some sort of extra edge. Is there any guaranteed way to duplicate those nifty starbolts of yours? Secret extraterrestrial mineral supplements in the diet, perhaps? BTW, do you know any tricks to greatly augment human strength without making me look like I'm obsessive-compulsive about bodybuilding? The "female wrestler" look just isn't me!_

Starfire frowned. Raven's powers derived from demon blood; Beast Boy's came from a risky experiment which saved his life when he otherwise would have died; her starbolts came from a similar source—except the intentions behind that experiment hadn't been nearly so affectionate—and Cyborg's body had been largely crushed. This Bette Kane sounded very proud of what she could already do with her highly trained body; it was most doubtful that she would want to have her arms and legs amputed and replaced by hard metal machinery.

She wrote out a brief reply:_ I am sorry, but I do not know of any safe and reliable way of gaining superpowers. Sometimes people are born that way and sometimes it happens by what you Earthlings call "the freak accident." I think most of the people who experience such freak accidents suffer terribly or simply die. If there were a sure way to gain such things without too much pain and risk, do you not think millions of people would have already done so? Would not some of your corporations be advertising that they could sell such abilities for fixed prices?_

_

* * *

_

_Dear Robin: _

_My daughter is a great acrobat and the finest archer you will ever see. I call her—I mean she calls herself—"Arrowette." I think she'd fit right in with your team. Do you have any sort of intern program for evaluating people's strengths and weaknesses for a few months? She'd be willing to work without salary, as long as room and board and medical coverage were all provided. By the way, you live on the West Coast—do you have many Hollywood contacts? I never see you doing guest roles on any TV shows, but it stands to reason you must get offers. Or perhaps you take off your mask and disguise yourself before walking in front of the camera? _

Robin blinked. This wasn't going the way he had expected. The letter rambled on and on in the same vein. It was signed:

_Bonnie King-Jones_

Robin took a deep breath and then read it all through a second time to confirm his first impression. Mrs. King-Jones (or Ms. King-Jones, or whatever she might call herself; there was no mention of Arrowette's daddy) apparently felt that the most important aspects of a superhero's lifestyle were garnering lots of good publicity, arranging lucrative licensing deals, networking with the high and mighty, seeking opportunities to do small parts in TV episodes while angling for a movie deal, and perhaps even fighting the occasional criminal! (But she mentioned that last subject only once, very briefly, so Robin felt confident it was at the _bottom_ of her list of priorities for her child.)

Of course he had heard of "stage mothers" before—he'd read that Ginger Rogers's mom had _still_ been right beside her, calling at least some of the shots, when Ginger was in her _sixties_—but somehow he had never realized there might be a woman who was fixated on turning her little girl into a money-making celebrity _superhero_. This was just ridiculous!

(Heck, if Robin's own mom and dad had still been alive, he'd have felt _no need_ to consider the superhero lifestyle in the first place. They certainly wouldn't have _pushed_ him in that direction!)

Furthermore, he hadn't even realized the word "Arrow" possessed—much less _needed_—a feminine form. After all, the female Titans didn't call themselves "Ravenette" and "Starfirette." Presumably the girls figured they were obviously feminine enough without needing to attach any cute French suffixes to their names just to _prove_ it!

* * *

**Author's Notes:**

Bonnie King-Jones and her daughter Cissie King-Jones were regulars in the "Young Justice" title back around the late 90s and early 2000s. Although I didn't realize it until years after I first read about them in a comic book, Bonnie had actually appeared in a few "Silver Age" comic book stories back around the early 1960s. Apparently she worked alongside Green Arrow as "Miss Arrowette," a supporting character who was trying to imitate his example as an archer superhero . . . and then she just faded away into limbo for over 30 years before her teenage daughter ("Arrowette") was introduced as a new superhero in the comics of the 1990s. As far as I know, mother and daughter never got so much as a cameo in any animated series. But if they did live in the timeline of our beloved _Teen Titans_ series, it would have been perfectly in character for Bonnie to write that letter.

In the comic books, Starfire's homeworld of Tamaran orbited the star Vega. On that basis, Starfire can reasonably be called a "Vegan." (I explain this because I don't think "Vega" was ever mentioned in dialogue in the TV episodes.) I decided one of her correspondents hadn't paid much attention to context—just heard that single word and _fixated_ on it, working on the theory that its only possible meaning was "a type of vegetarian."

Speaking of which: There _is_ a "Bette Kane" in the DCU who operates under the name "Flamebird." No powers, but she apparently started superheroics in large part because of a crush on the original Robin (Dick Grayson). Back around the early 1960s she was actually known as "Betty Kane, Bat-Girl" in the comic books, but that part of her career has long since been retconned away into oblivion. To do her justice, the girl in the comic books is bright enough to _avoid_ making the "Vegan" mistake which I inserted as a joke here, so let's just assume this is a younger, more naïve version of Bette, with a shorter attention span!

The other correspondents I made up, as I usually do.


End file.
